Mar 4 2015

Weekly Round-Up: Comics Released 2/25/15

Look, there are a lot of comics out there. Too many. We can never hope to have in-depth conversations about all of them. But, we sure can round up some of the more noteworthy titles we didn’t get around to from the week. Today, Patrick, Spencer and Drew discuss Darth Vader 2, Spider-Man 2099 9, The Amazing Spider-Man 15, Deadpool 42, Secret Avengers 13, S.H.I.E.L.D. 3, All New X-Men 38, Effigy 2, The Wicked and the Divine 8, Orphan Black 1, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutanimals 1, Batman Eternal 47, Secret Origins 10, and The Flash 39.

“I’d rather be a hammer than a nail.”

-“El Condor Pasa,” Simon & Garfunkel

Patrick: Part of being a good soldier is accepting the responsibilities that are thrust upon you without questioning. I was hanging out with our own Shelby Peterson this weekend, and she was talking about the ship that her father served on in the Navy. Evidently, they did all kinds of drills as through they had nuclear weapons on board their aircraft carrier, but none of the sailors ever actually knew whether or not they were armed with nukes or not. That information simply belonged to men at higher pay grades, and it was basically their jobs not to ask questions. In Darth Vader 2, general Tagge makes the assertion over and over again that Vader is nothing more than a tool or a weapon, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Continue reading →

Mar 3 2015

Gotham Academy 5

Today, Spencer and Michael are discussing Gotham Academy 5, originally released February 25th, 2015.

Spencer: It’s not easy figuring out how and when to reveal key plot points and answer pressing questions when constructing a narrative. Some stories get so caught up hyping big mysteries that the solutions can’t live up to the audience’s expectations — others lose their inertia by revealing all too early. Thus far, I’ve been quite impressed by how Becky Cloonan and Brenden Fletcher have handled their mysteries in Gotham Academy. Issue 5 is full of big reveals, balanced expertly by Cloonan and Fletcher, which fill in many of the blanks about Olive’s lost summer and Tristan’s identity. This new information expands the world of Gotham Academy and helps flesh out the cast, both individually and as a unit, while avoiding the pitfalls I listed at the outset of this article. Plus, it’s loads of fun. Continue reading →

Mar 2 2015

New Avengers 30

Today, Spencer and Mark are discussing New Avengers 30, originally released February 25th, 2015.

Spencer: Jonathan Hickman and Dalibor Talajic’s New Avengers 30 reads a bit like a textbook on multiversal theory. It’s about as dry as beef jerky, and is focused so strongly on explaining every minute detail about the Ivory Kings that it largely fails to address why they’re doing what they’re doing. The information contained within its pages will likely prove important as Secret Wars grows closer, but for the moment, New Avengers 30 feels like an issue that highlights the greatest weakness of Hickman’s Avengers books: a focus on plot that supersedes “story” or characterization. Continue reading →

Feb 27 2015

Spider-Gwen 1

Today, Patrick and Spencer are discussing Spider-Gwen 1, originally released February 25th, 2015.

Patrick: If you had to name the most important quality for a superhero story to nail, what would it be? Action? Adventure? Humor? Relatability? Kind of depends on the character, doesn’t it? What I think ends up being most important across publishers and mediums is the story’s ability to express the fundamental nature of the character. If you’re telling a Batman story, it better be dark, grimey, and morally ambiguous. If you’re telling a Spider-Man story, it better be humorous, optimistic and dutiful. So how on earth would anyone write a Spider-Gwen story? The character barely exists beyond a small roll in the recent Spider-Verse event. Fans latched on to the character for a number of reasons (everyone misses Gwen Stacy), but the clearest virtue of the character is that she looks amazing. In lieu of a letter’s page, editor Nick Lowe thanks fans for worshiping the incredible design of Gwen’s costume, celebrating it through fan-art and cos-play. This obsession with image becomes the fundamental nature of stories in Gwen’s world, as Spider-Gwen turns the superficial into the substantial. Continue reading →

Feb 25 2015

Weekly Round-Up: Comics Released 2/18/15

Look, there are a lot of comics out there. Too many. We can never hope to have in-depth conversations about all of them. But, we sure can round up some of the more noteworthy titles we didn’t get around to from the week. Today, Michael, Spencer, Patrick and Drew discuss Justice League 39, Batman and Robin 39, Batman Superman 19, Superman Wonder Woman 16, Batman Eternal 46, Legendary Star-Lord 9, Rocket Raccoon 8, Uncanny X-Men 31, Silk 1, Ms. Marvel 12, Black Widow 15, All New Captain America 4, Avengers World 17, Nova 27, Secret Identities 1, and Bitch Planet 3.

Michael: And so, the latest Justice League arc, “The Amazo Virus”, ends not with a bang, but with a whimper. Wonder Woman, Superman and Luthor are fending for themselves against the infected Justice League. Superman gives Luthor a sample of his blood to help create a cure (self-inflicted heat vision can induce bleeding, I guess?) and Captain Cold saves the day. Apparently Amazo is susceptible to the cold, so Captain Cold subdues him and they throw him into cold storage. As a byproduct of this whole event, dozens of infected humans have kept their newly-found superpowers. Despite Neutron still being alive we are still unfortunately no closer to finding out who put the hit on Lex Luthor. And just when Jessica Cruz is feeling completely sidelined and unimportant, Hal Jordan comes back to steal the spotlight…er…help her. Continue reading →

Feb 25 2015

Batgirl 39

Today, Michael and Spencer are discussing Batgirl 39, originally released February 18th, 2015.

Michael: In most pieces of pop culture, the protagonist is the point of entry for the audience into the fictional world that we are experiencing. You’ll often see events or circumstances that the protagonist themselves isn’t immediately aware of, but for the most part you are riding shotgun with the main character. In comic books, that means you follow the story with the benefit of the main character’s narration/inner monologue. The tricky thing is that your hero may not always be a reliable narrator. Even if they aren’t intentionally misleading you, they are probably not giving you the full story. Such is the case of a one Barbara Gordon, the titular Batgirl. Continue reading →

Feb 24 2015

Loki: Agent of Asgard 11

Today, Spencer and Taylor are discussing Loki: Agent of Asgard 11, originally released February 18th, 2015.

Spencer: When reading a new book, it’s easy to feel like the story is malleable. Sure, we know the ending has already been written, and, in fact, is already printed on the upcoming pages, but until we’ve actually read those pages, there’s always a feeling of freedom, like maybe, if we wish hard enough, we can push the story in the direction we want it to go. Once we’ve finished the book, though, that feeling goes away; the ending was always concrete, but now that we’ve seen it with our own eyes, the idea that maybe we can influence its outcome essentially vanishes. Al Ewing and Lee Garbett make that idea literal in Loki: Agent of Asgard 11. The series has always been about Loki’s attempt to reform, but the arrival of his evil future self — “King Loki” — essentially makes that impossible. If King Loki represents the end of Loki’s story, as plain is if it’s written on the page, then what chance could Loki possibly have to escape that fate? Continue reading →

Feb 19 2015

She-Hulk 12

Today, Drew and Spencer are discussing She-Hulk 12, originally released February 18th, 2015.

And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed – if all records told the same tale – then the lie passed into history and became truth. “Who controls the past,” ran the Party slogan, “controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory.

George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

Drew: I fully appreciate what’s disturbing about historical revisionism — the above passage is undoubtedly the scariest thing I read in high school — but I’m less certain why people seem to be so opposed to similar revisions to fictional continuities. Retcons (or retroactive continuity) might be one of the most reviled devices in all of comicdom, but I honestly don’t understand why. Nobody is more invested in the idea that each issue matters than the publishers (or at least their marketing teams), so fears that a single retcon represents a first step on a slippery slope strike me as totally alarmist. Instead, publishers tend to use retcons to clean up continuities that have become overly complicated after decades of embellishment. Still, being told the opposite of a fact we know is unsettling, even if the “fact” describes something in a fictional world. It’s that exact phenomenon — that the facts both do and don’t matter — that makes She-Hulk 12 so much fun. Continue reading →

Feb 18 2015

Weekly Round-Up: Comics Released 2/11/15

Look, there are a lot of comics out there. Too many. We can never hope to have in-depth conversations about all of them. But, we sure can round up some of the more noteworthy titles we didn’t get around to from the week. Today, Drew, Patrick and Spencer discuss Astro City 20, Guardians of the Galaxy 24, X-Men 24, All-New Ghost Rider 11, Spider-Woman 4, Justice League United 9, and Batman Eternal 45.

…it ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward.

Rocky Balboa, Rocky Balboa

Drew: A hero’s journey necessarily requires adversity, which in turn requires perseverance of the hero. Indeed, perseverance is the key quality of virtually every hero — especially superheroes. They may get knocked down in the first round, but there wouldn’t be a series to read if they didn’t keep getting back up. But what about when they’re no longer certain they’d survive getting knocked down? How does a hero reconcile their ingrown drive to keep fighting with the hard truths about getting older? That’s exactly the idea at the heart of Kurt Busiek’s Astro City 20, as Quarrel and Crackerjack confront how their age is affecting their performance. Continue reading →

Feb 18 2015

Cyclops 10

Today, Spencer and Mark are discussing Cyclops 10, originally released February 11th, 2015.

Spencer: When we first started covering Cyclops, Patrick and Suzanne speculated about the kind of influence Scott’s space-pirate father would have on him. Corsair isn’t a “bad guy,” but he is a morally ambiguous figure whose decisions are often based more on pulling off a score or simply staying alive than any of the more traditionally heroic values of Scott’s previous mentors. In the issues since then Scott’s been put through the wringer, but no matter what he’s faced, his humanity and morality have come out on top — in fact, Scott’s influence even seems to be making Corsair a better person, not the other way around. John Layman and Javier Garrόn’s Cyclops 10 makes that fact explicit, but questions whether Scott’s example is enough to end the years of hatred between Corsair and Valesh Malafect. Even though he’s become his own man, is Scott still doomed to repeat the mistakes of his father? Continue reading →

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